Friday, December 28, 2007

1800-1849: Thirty Five Invasions And A Genocide.

1800: UNITED STATES. In the “Revolution of 1800” Slave-owner and ethnic cleanser Thomas Jefferson captures the White House solely as a result of the “three-fifths” clause of the Constitution which gives slave-owners political power far out of proportion to their number.

Successfully marketed to generations of Americans and others around the world as a wonderfully articulate advocate of freedom and liberty, Jefferson was, in reality, a thoroughgoing fascist, a hypocritical windbag, an ethnic cleanser of considerable accomplishment and, very likely, a sexual predator. He owned thousands of slaves in his lifetime, almost certainly had sexual relations with at least one of them, and was an avid proponent of the expansion of slavery to the western territories then being stolen from native Americans by land speculators. Even Jefferson’s much-lauded championing of the University of Virginia was largely an effort to turn out educated and articulate defenders of the expansion of slavery westward into the land then being stolen from Indian nations in violation of legally-binding treaties.

The much-revered “apostle of democracy” had his slaves whipped and sold into the Deep South as a terror tactic to induce his remaining slaves to obey. By 1822, Jefferson owned 267 slaves, among them, unbelievably enough or perhaps not, were almost certainly several of his own children. Of the thousands of slaves he owned, despite the mountain of hypocritical nonsense he spewed about "freedom", Jefferson freed only three of his slaves during his lifetime, and five more at his death, all likely his own descendants.

A typically Jeffersonian contribution to democracy, equality, freedom and liberty is contained in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in which he advanced his doctrine of black racial inferiority, a bit of nastiness which formed the ideological basis of American racism and the justification of slavery and apartheid in the U.S. for decades.

The great Jefferson was scarcely more “democratic” when it came to whites who were not part of the slave-owning ruling class and who were not allowed to vote in the new demockracy. Of ordinary white Americans, the "great democrat" said, “common folk must never be considered when we calculate the national character”.

Jefferson’s finest contributions came, however, like George Washington’s, in the field of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. A brilliant and articulate champion of genocide against native Americans, the great democrat wrote that the government is obliged "now to pursue them (the native owners of the land Jefferson and his kind so coveted) to extermination or drive them to new seats beyond our reach."

1802-ongoing: UNITED STATES. One of America's most prolific merchants of death and long-lived pillars of the American ruling class, the Dupont family, after having escaped from revolutionary France with a vast fortune, establishes a gunpowder manufacturing business in Delaware with the assistance of Napoleon Bonaparte. As is the way with the ruling class, it's all very cozy. The Duponts help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase of about a million square miles from France, which makes some people very, very wealthy. The Duponts' arms biz gets a real shot in the arm when slave-owner and ethnic cleanser cum President Thomas Jefferson, places massive federal gunpowder orders with his buddies, the Duponts. It's the beginning of a long and loving relationship. The Duponts will provide gonzo killing power for every American war to the present day. Hey, it's just good business and better living and, for some, dying, through chemistry.

1803-04: HAITI. Haitian independence fighters defeat Napoleon's army in the Battle of Vertieres. Shortly thereafter, Haiti declares independence from France and the emancipation of all slaves. Can't be havin' a nation of free niggers on America's doorstep so the U.S. ruling class begins a campaign of boycott and destabilization against Haiti.

1804: LIBYA. The U.S. invades Tripoli using Arab, Greek and Berber mercenaries.

1806: MEXICO. U.S. forces invade Mexico and construct a fort in the Mexican state of Colorado.

1806: UNITED STATES. After a strike for higher wages, the union of Philadelphia Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) is convicted of and bankrupted by charges of criminal conspiracy. The U.S. government will use the tactic to ensure a constant supply of cheap, unorganized labor, including child labor, to the ruling class for most of the nineteenth century.

1810: FLORIDA. U.S. troops invade and seize Spanish territory as far east as the Perdido River.

1810-50: UNITED STATES/CANADA/MEXICO. Between thirty and one hundred thousand American slaves escape to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railway, a network of Quakers, abolitionists and people who actually believe in freedom. Although most slaves escaped to Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), many found freedom in Nova Scotia, Lower Canada (Quebec) and British Columbia. A smaller number escaped from the U.S. to Mexico.

Among the many heroes and heroines of the Underground Railway was Harriet Tubman, herself an escaped slave, who, over a period of eleven years, personally conducted seventy escaping slaves to freedom in Canada.

1811: UNITED STATES. Charles Deslandes leads an unsuccessful slave revolt in the Louisiana Territory. Deslandes and five hundred slaves march toward New Orleans, killing two whites, burning plantations and crops, and capturing weapons and ammunition. The freedom fighters are stopped west of New Orleans by a slave-owners’ militia supported by U.S. government troops. Sixty-six slaves are killed. Deslandes and twenty others are sentenced to death, shot, and decapitated, and their severed heads placed on poles along the Mississippi River Road as a warning to other slaves who might be harboring rash ideas about freedom.

1812: FLORIDA. U.S. troops invade and occupy parts of the Spanish territory of East Florida.

1812-15: CANADA. While Britain is at war with France, the U.S. uses British enforcement of a naval blockade against France as the pretext for an invasion and attempted annexation of Canada. The land grab was defeated by the British and Canadians and their Indian allies. In beating back the American attack, British and Canadian forces occupied Washington, D.C. forcing President James Madison to flee.

Although the primary and most obvious motive for the attempted annexation of Canada was simply to acquire more land in order to increase the wealth of the U.S. ruling class, a likely underlying motive was that, as the northern terminus of the Underground Railway, Canada had become a haven for slaves escaping from the land of the free. An annexed Canada would have been subject to the Fugitive Slave Act. In the fantasy world of American "history", the failed American attempt to occupy and annex Canada is magically cast as a "victory" and as the “Second Revolution”, a fiction which, like so many others, is widely believed in the U.S. to the present day.

1813: FLORIDA. The U.S. invades and seizes Spanish territory at Mobile Bay.

1813-14: NUKU HIVA, MARQUESAS. The U.S. invades the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific and builds a fort.

1814: UNITED STATES. Land speculator, ethnic cleanser and slave owner Andrew Jackson, whose noble portrait graces the U.S. twenty dollar bill, personally leads the massacre and then supervises the mutilation of more than eight hundred Creek Indians, men, women and children. Jackson's valiant troops cut off the noses of their victims to provide an accurate body count and then slice strips of flesh from the bodies to tan and turn into bridles.

1815: ALGERIA. The U.S. invades Algiers seeking “indemnities”.

1815: LIBYA. The U.S. invades Tripoli seeking “indemnities”.

1816-18: FLORIDA. The U.S. Army attacks Seminole Indians and pursues them into the Spanish territory of northern Florida which had become a haven for escaped slaves seeking freedom. U.S. forces attack and occupy Spanish posts and murder British citizens living in the territory.

1817: FLORIDA. The U.S. invades the Spanish territory of Amelia Island.

1822: LIBERIA. The American Colonization Society, headed by slave-owners Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, buys land in northwest Africa, reportedly at gunpoint, to create a “home” for freed blacks by inventing from thin air the fabulously-named "country" of Liberia with, as its capital, the city of Monrovia, fabulously, if immodestly, named after slave-owner Monroe. Slave-owners like Jefferson and Monroe were eager to get slaves who had been freed, for one reason or another, out of the U.S.

The majority of the free “blacks” who occupied Liberia were, in fact, more brown than black because they were the children and grandchildren of slaveowning champions of liberty, such as Jefferson, who sexually exploited the slaves they owned, fathering their own children into slavery.

Shipping the slave-owners' own children and grandchildren to Liberia not only got a lot of uppity niggers out of the U.S. but also eliminated the possibility that they would ever be in a position to make claims against the estates of their parents and grandparents in competition with their lily white half-brothers and sisters.

The freed “blacks” had learned their lessons from Thomas Jefferson et al all too well and soon established plantations in “Liberia”, enslaving the local Africans and parading around in top hats and corsets in imitation of their white parents, grandparents and erstwhile owners.

1822: UNITED STATES. Denmark Vesey plans one of the largest slave rebellions in the history of the U.S. Vesey’s rebellion fails when details are leaked. South Carolina authorities arrest the leaders of the uprising and charge 131 people with conspiracy. 67 men are convicted and 35 hanged, including Vesey.

1822-24: CUBA. The U.S. repeatedly invades Cuba, “chasing pirates”.

1823-present: UNITED STATES. Slave-owner and U.S. President James Monroe promulgates the infamous Monroe Doctrine which will serve as the rationalization to generations of Americans for countless illegal U.S. invasions of almost every Latin American and Caribbean country, many on multiple occasions. It will also serve as the rationalization for the overthrow of their governments, many democratically elected, the theft of their land and resources and, in some, cases their entire countries. It will serve as the rationalization for genocides against their native populations, the enslavement and impoverishment of their people, the installation of many of the most brutal dictatorships in human history and the training and arming of their death squads in kidnap, torture and murder. And it will all continue, unabated, until the present moment.

We will conquer the world,
but we will lose our sou
l.

John Quincy Adams

1824: PUERTO RICO. The U.S. invades Puerto Rico, attacking the town of Fajardo, to “avenge an insult”.

1825: CUBA. The U.S. and Britain jointly invade Cuba at Sagua La Grande to “capture pirates”.

1827: GREECE. The U.S. invades the Greek islands of Argenteire, Miconi and Andros “hunting pirates”.

1830: UNITED STATES. Land speculator, mass murderer and slave-owner cum U.S. president Andrew Jackson urges American troops to ever greater efficiency in the ethnic cleansing of native Americans. He tells troops to "root out from their dens" and kill Indian women and their "whelps" adding, in his second annual message to Congress that, while some people tend to grow "melancholy" over the Indians being driven to their "tomb," an understanding of "true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another." The U.S. government offers bounties for murdering Indians and free land and other fine business opportunities to settlers willing to steal Indian land.

1830-38: UNITED STATES. Mass murderer and slave-owner cum President Andrew Jackson signs into law the Indian Removal Act, part of his quest to steal ever more land from the Indian nations. The act enables the militias of the Appalachian and southern states to carry out forcible ethnic cleansing, rounding up native Indians and pushing them ever further west. The Removal Act brings about the “Trail of Tears”, resulting in the genocide of most of the remaining Cherokee nation by the U.S. government.

1831: UNITED STATES. Another attempt is made to turn the lie of freedom and liberty in America into reality when Nat Turner leads a revolt of slaves in Virginia. Turner and fifty slaves and free blacks, go door to door, freeing slaves and killing their white "owners". In total some fifty five slave-owners and members of their families are killed in the revolution. As with all revolutions for genuine freedom and democracy in America, Turner's slave revolt is suppressed by overwhelming military force. Turner is tried, convicted and hung, then skinned, beheaded and quartered. Fifteen other revolutionaries are also hung. America is once again safe for slavery.

1831: FALKLAND ISLANDS. U.S. forces invade the Falkland Islands and destroy the Argentinean settlement of Port Soledad after an American is arrested for illegally catching seals in Falkland Islands waters.

1832: SUMATRA. U.S. naval forces invade Sumatra “to punish natives”. The U.S. kills four hundred and fifty Sumatrans when it destroys the town of Quallah Battoo.

1832: MEXICO. Louisana petitions the federal government to make an arrangment with Mexico to allow escaped slaves from the U.S. to be apprehended in Mexico.

1832: UNITED STATES. Valiant U.S. government troops massacre more than one hundred and fifty men, women and children of the Sauk and Fox Indian nations who had attempted to surrender to them.

1833: ARGENTINA. The U.S. invades Buenos Aires to “protect U.S. interests”.

1835: UNITED STATES. The Postmaster General of the United States bans material advocating the abolition of slavery from the U.S. Mail.

1835: UNITED STATES. The ever-generous ruling class provides employment opportunities to all, including children as young as seven. Children in Patterson, New Jersey go on strike for an eleven hour day and a six day work week.

1835-36: PERU. The U.S. invades Lima and Callao to “protect U.S. interests”.

1836: MEXICO. The U.S. invades and occupies parts of the Mexican state of Texas.

1836: MEXICO. Ah yes, remember the Alamo. The bullshit and propaganda machine really gets cranked up on this one. A handful of valiant, freedom-loving Americans pluckily fighting the swarthy, evil Mexican oppressor and giving their lives in the cause of liberty. Makes your heart beat real proud in your star spangled chest, don’t it?

And who are these heroes of liberty? Davy Crockett, ethnic cleanser and slave owner. Jim Bowie, land speculator, slave owner and slave trader. And what were our heroes doing in the Alamo mission in the first place?

In 1835, there were about twenty thousand Americans and four thousand slaves living in the Mexican state of Texas, most of the slaves engaged in making their owners wealthier by the cultivation of cotton. In December of 1835, the Mexican government effectively banned slavery in Texas. Always keen to defend freedom and liberty, the American settlers attempted to secede and steal Texas from Mexico in order to maintain slavery and the wealth and power they derived from it.

Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arrived with troops and laid seige to the Catholic mission of the Alamo, which the slaveowners had seized. At the end of a thirteen day seige, all the inhabitants of the Alamao, with the exception of women, children and slaves, were dead.

The seige of the Alamo is then re-invented, the truth turned upside down, becoming yet another of the great lies of American “history”, spread through a host of movies, television programs, books and articles.

1837: UNITED STATES. Abolitionist Elijiah Lovejoy, the editor of the Alton, Ohio Observer is murdered by a white lynching party and the newspaper’s printing presses are smashed for the fourth time. Can't be havin' no freedom of speech, can we now? At the time, slavery still existed in Ohio and the state was profoundly racist. More than twenty members of the mob which murdered Lovejoy were tried. Naturally, all were acquitted.

1837-43: UNITED STATES. Rampant speculation and the issuing of unbacked paper money by banks leads to the Panic of 1837 followed by a major depression. The U.S. government had created the fever by selling millions of acres of land stolen from Indian nations, largely to speculators. Out of eight hundred and fifty banks in the U.S. at the time, three hundred and forty-three closed their doors forever, taking their depositors' money with them.

1838: UNITED STATES. In the interests of furthering freedom of religion in the U.S., Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri issues an executive order known as the "Extermination Order" making it legal to kill anyone who belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). Boggs says, "The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the State."

1838: UNITED STATES. It’s open season on Mormons in Missouri and, at Haun's Hill, a state militia massacres seventeen Mormon men and boys. Mormon leaders are tried by a military tribunal, convicted of high treason against the state of Missouri and sentenced to death. Mormons are ordered to leave the state in October and November. They cross the frozen Mississippi River to seek refuge in Illinois. During the forced march, many elderly Mormons die from exposure and at least sixty Mormon men are slaughtered by mobs. Dozens of women and girls are raped.

The order making it legal to kill Mormons in Missouri is not rescinded until 1976.

1838: UNITED STATES. A mob burns down Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia in an attempt to stop anti-slavery meetings.

1838-39: SUMATRA. U.S. forces invade Sumatra to “punish natives”. They burn the town of Muka to the ground.

1840: FIJI. U.S. naval forces invade Fiji to “punish natives” who had rashly attempted to stop Americans from illegally surveying their country.

1841: DRUMMOND ISLAND, KINGSMILL GROUP. The U.S. invades the Pacific island to “avenge the murder of a seaman by the natives”. So the U.S. military says. In fact, without consent, the U.S. landed a force on the island to "survey" it and when the job was done, a U.S. sailor, John Anderson failed to return to his ship. Assuming, without evidence, that Anderson had been murdered, the commander invaded the island, burning the town to the ground and murdering twelve Drummond islanders.

1841: SAMOA. A U.S. naval force invades and burns Samoan towns to the ground after the alleged murder of an American seaman on Upolu Island.

1841-42: UNITED STATES. As of 1841, only a tiny proportion of the population of Rhode Island is entitled to vote. All women and anyone who isn't white are completely disenfranchised. Only white males meeting the state's property requirement are permitted to vote in the pseudo-democracy. The net result is that the state is controlled by small number of white, male landowners.

In 1841, suffrage supporters, led by Thomas Wilson Dorr, hold a People's Convention which enfranchises all white males with one year's residence in the state, regardless of property owned. Voters overwhelmingly support a referendum on the People's Convention in December.

With most militia in the state supporting the results of the referendum, Dorr leads an unsuccessful attack against the arsenal in Providence in May 1842. Dorr disbands the rebel forces and flees Rhode Island. In 1843, Dorr is convicted of treason and sentenced to solitary confinement at hard labor for life, rocking the apple cart of the ruling class being strictly verboten. In 1845, Dorr is pardoned but, by then, his health is destroyed and he dies some years later.

1841: UNITED STATES. Maryland passes a law mandating a ten to twenty year prison sentence for any free black having abolitionist materials in his or her possession.

1842: MEXICO. U.S. forces invade and occupy Monterrey and, a week later, San Diego in the Mexican state of California.

1842: UNITED STATES. The District of Columbia begins enforcement of a "colored curfew." Blacks on the streets after ten o'clock at night are liable to arrest, fine and flogging.

1843: CHINA. U.S. Marines invade at Canton to crush opposition to American attempts at commercial expansion in China.

1843: IVORY COAST. The U.S. invades various places on the Ivory Coast of Africa to “punish natives”.

1844: MEXICO. The U.S. once again invades the Mexican state of Texas.

1844: UNITED STATES. Control of the mass media by the ruling class is solidified when Federal troops confiscate the printing press of the Cherokee Advocate which foolishly questions the genocide of the Indian people being carried out by the U.S. government.

1845-present: UNITED STATES. The concept of “manifest destiny” is invented which merges religious delusion with boundless hypocrisy and racism to come up with the proposition that it is the United States’ “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence(sic) has given us (sic) for the development of the great experiment of liberty (sic) and federated self-government entrusted (sic) to us.”

The packaging of wars of aggression, genocide and imperialism in the tattered camouflage of liberty with a Divinely-directed spin are old propaganda tricks which have been used to delude the U.S. masses throughout the history of the country to the present moment.

1845: MEXICO. The U.S. Congress votes to seize the Mexican state of Texas which had unwisely allowed Americans to settle within its borders. The settlers have been trying since 1836 to take Texas from Mexico and incorporate it into the United States for the very good reason that the Mexican constitution specifically forbids slavery while it is perfectly legal in the freedom-loving ole U.S. of A.

1845-49: UNITED STATES. Slave-owner J. Marion Sims, honored throughout the U.S. as the "father of gynecology" and celebrated by many public statues and monuments, conducts a series of gruesome gynecological experiments on slave women in South Carolina. His victims included women he himself "owned". Sims wrote that he felt he had a "Divine mission" to perform his experiments, so we shouldn't be too critical. All of the surgical experiments on black women were performed without anesthetic and many died. One woman endured 34 experimental operations at Sims' hands. Sims was, however, an equal opportunity vivisector and later applied his skills to experimentation on destitute Irish immigrant women at the Women's Hospital in New York. Being of inferior social status, the Irish women did not qualify for anesthetic either.

1846: UNITED STATES. New Jersey claims for itself the dubious distinction of being the last northern state to abolish slavery.

1846-1848:
MEXICO. The U.S. invades Mexico on the manufactured and absurd pretext of an impending Mexican invasion of the U.S. The U.S. invades with troops and also launches heavy and murderous bombardments of civilians from artillery and ships offshore. The basic warplan is overwhelming shock and terror.

A four day long bombardment of the port of Veracruz causes massive destruction of the city and the deaths of four to five hundred Mexican civilians including large numbers of women and children. A Mexican proposal, made under a flag of truce, to evacuate civilians from Veracruz is refused by the gallant U.S. commander. Atrocities and mass murders of non-combatants are committed by American troops, most notoriously by the Texas Rangers.

The Texas Rangers...were mostly made up of adventurers and vagabonds.... The gang of miscreants under the leadership of Mustang Gray were of this description. This party, in cold-blood, murdered almost the entire male population of the rancho of Guadalupe, where not a single weapon, offensive or defensive, could be found! Their only object was plunder! S. Compton Smith

The U.S. steals almost half a million square miles of Mexico, almost half of the country's total land area, including all of present-day Texas, California, Nevada, Utah and parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming. U.S. forces invade as far as Mexico City. More than twenty five thousand Mexicans are killed by the U.S. and tens of thousands more injured attempting to resist the invasion and theft of Mexican land.

Philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau opposes the U.S. seizure of Mexico and, in protest, refuses to pay taxes to support the American war of aggression. He is, of course, promptly jailed. Congressman Abraham Lincoln likewise opposes the American aggression, calling it "belligerent expansionism". Ex-president John Quincy Adams says that the war against Mexico is fundamentally an effort to expand slavery. Right John and don't forget all that gold in California and all that copper in Arizona and all that......

I do not think there ever was a more wicked war than that waged by the United States in Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not the moral courage enough to resign. Ulysses S. Grant

1847-48: UNITED STATES. The Virginia legislature, deeply committed to all freedoms, including freedom of speech, passes a law decreeing that "any free person who, by speaking or writing, shall maintain that owners have not right of property in their slaves, shall be punishable by confinement in the jail, not more than twelve months, and by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars." Hell, seems like even "free" folks ain't free in the land of the free.

1848: UNITED STATES. Pennsylvania passes the first child labor law requiring that workers be at least twelve years old.

1848-ongoing: UNITED STATES. After the theft of half of the land area of Mexico, thereby making it safe for slavery under God and the flag, the U.S. government gets into the genocide business in a big way and begins the systematic annihilation of all the Indian nations inhabiting Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Wyoming. After the land belonging to the Indian nations is stolen, which is pretty much all of it, the survivors are rounded up into reservations.

1849-ongoing: UNITED STATES. It is just amazin' how these things happen. It turns out that just after the U.S. has murdered its way to ownership of California, there are major gold discoveries. What a stroke of luck!

Under Truth, Justice or The American Way, now in force in California, Mexican landowners in California are required to prove ownership according to U.S. law, which is more or less impossible. As a purely unintended result, naturally, many lose their farms, ranches, businesses and homes and are forced into menial labor simply in order to survive. The mass migration of white miners to California during the Gold Rush, beginning in 1849, soons makes California natives a minority in their own land.